“Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination, including full autopsies and immunohistochemical brain analyses [looking fora buildup of tau, an abnormal protein that strangles brain cells].” In short, it’s really serious, problems often do not surface for years, and there is a strong feeling in the NFL that CTE is likely to impact a majority of players, particularly the longer they play. And even as the NFL has paid out millions of dollars to settle player claims, no one at the NFL has simply come out and declared a clear and direct link between concussions sustained during professional training and play… and CTE. Until now.

“After years of theN.F.L.‘s disputing evidence that connected football to chronic traumaticencephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease found in nearly 100 former players, a top official for the league for the first time acknowledged the link. To many, it was an echo of big tobacco’s confession in 1997 that smoking causescancerand heart disease.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, asked during a round-table discussion aboutconcussionswhether ‘there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like C.T.E.’

“Jeff Miller, theN.F.L.’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, said, ‘The answer to that is certainly, yes.’His responsesignaled a stunning about-face for the league, which has been accused by former players and independent experts of hiding the dangers ofhead injuriesfor decades.” New York Times, March 15th. Some high schools have abandoned tackle football as an on-campus sport, and there are many who question whether there will come a day, for America’s most popular professional sport, when we will look back at tackle football the way we look back at Roman gladiators today.

Certainly, the legal position of the NFL has changed. “Lawyers for some players involved in a lawsuit with the N.F.L. over its handling of brain injuries quickly seized on the league’s admission.

“A settlement was approved by a Third Circuit district court judge last April but is on appeal. The players argued that the league should pay damages to all players found with C.T.E., not just those found to have the disease before the settlement was approved a year ago.

“In a letter sent early [March 15th] morning to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Steven Molo, their lawyer, said Mr. Miller’s comments on Capitol Hill were ‘a stark turn from its position before the district court.’

The N.F.L. rebutted those claims. In its own filing to the Third Circuit late [on the 15th], the league said that the settlement compensates players if they have symptoms “allegedly associated with C.T.E.” The league added that it ‘previously acknowledged studies identifying a potential association between C.T.E. and certain football players.’

“More broadly, the league’s public position could influence other levels of football because many college, high school and youth leagues take their cues from the N.F.L.

“Others in the sports world, including parents of young athletes, ‘have trusted the N.F.L., and the N.F.L. was on the fence for a long time,’ said Chris Nowinski, a co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. ‘We now have a significant confirmation from the N.F.L., and that could have ripple effects around football and sports.’

“The N.F.L. has spent millions of dollars in efforts to tamp down fear among parents over football’s physical toll. It has directed millions of dollars to research C.T.E. and head trauma. It gave $45 million to USA Football, a formerly obscure nonprofit, to promote safe tackling and reassure jittery parents that football’s inherent risks can be mitigated through on-field techniques and awareness. The league has hired experts to monitor games.” NY Times.

With television’s most lucrative per game contracts, ratings soaring through the roof, the NFL recently moved from being a non-profit league to one with full for-profit status with the IRS. That also suggests that there is a very deep pocket with an ability to pay the millions of dollars that might result from new claims. While helmet technology is creeping along – the big issue is the sudden deceleration of the brain as it slams into the skull itself – and treatment requiring very early detection of concussion damage, the league has a long way to go. Spotting a concussion instantly and pulling a player off the field immediately is just a beginning. Careers may end a lot earlier than those in the profession might like… but the risks of long term damage are seemingly exceptionally high. At least folks are admitting where causation truly lies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while I recognize how deeply tackle football is ingrained into so many American communities, we really do owe it to our kids to be particularly watchful and wary of this rather horrible long term risk.

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Peter's Bio

Peter J. Dekom practices law in Los Angeles and was formerly "of counsel" with Weissmann Wolff Bergman Coleman Grodin & Evall and a partner in the firm of Bloom, Dekom, Hergott and Cook. Mr. Dekom's clients include or have included such Hollywood notables as George Lucas, Paul Haggis, Keenen Ivory Wayans, John Travolta, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Andy Davis, Robert Towne and Larry Gordon among many others, as well as corporate clients such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., Pacific Telesis and Japan Victor Corporation (JVC). He has been listed in Forbes among the top 100 lawyers in the United States and in Premiere Magazine as one of the 50 most powerful people in Hollywood .

Mr. Dekom has been a management/marketing consultant, and entrepreneur in the fields of entertainment, Internet, and telecommunications. As a consultant to the state of New Mexico for almost a decade, he was instrumental in creating, writing and implementing legislation to encourage film and television production in the state and supervised the film loan program portion of that incentive structure until the spring of 2011. Mr. Dekom has also provided off-balance sheet, insurance-backed financing for major motion picture studios.

Mr. Dekom served on the board of directors of Imagine Films Entertainment while the company remained publicly traded and was a board member of Will Vinton Studios and Cinebase Software, among others, leaving upon change of ownership. He has also served as a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and Academy Foundation, Board of Directors, Chairman (now Emeritus) of the American Cinematheque, and on the Advisory Board of the Shanghai International Film Festival. He recently served on the Board of Governors for the America Bar Assn.’s Sports and Entertainment Law Section, where he often authored articles, delivered lectures and continues to be an active participant.

The Beverly Hills Bar Association honored Mr. Dekom as Entertainment Lawyer of the Year in 1994, the Century City Bar Association accorded him the same honor in 2004, and the Family Assistance Program named him Man of the Year in 1992 for his work with the homeless. In 2012, the American Bar Association, through its Forum on Sports and Entertainment Law, honored Mr. Dekom with its highest recognition for entertainment lawyers, the Ed Rubin Service Award. Author of dozens of scholarly articles, Mr. Dekom also is the co-author of Not on My Watch; Hollywood vs. the Future (New Millennium Publishing, 2003) with Peter Sealey and author of Next: Reinventing Media, Marketing and Entertainment (HekaRose Publishing Group 2014). He has served as an adjunct professor in the UCLA Film School, a lecturer (entertainment marketing) at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business as well as being a featured speaker at film festivals, corporations, universities and bar associations all over the world.

Mr. Dekom graduated from Yale in 1968 (BA), and graduated first in his class in 1973 from the UCLA School of Law (JD). He is married to Kelley Choate, an MBA and former art gallery-owner who evolved into a renowned micro-collage artist in her own right. He also has a son, Christopher (b. 1983), who is a Duke University graduate, a Chartered Financial Analyst, a 2013 Darden (UVa) MBA graduate, and is currently an executive with a Los Angeles-based media and entertainment company. Chris' wife, Stephanie (a 2013 George Washington University MD grad), is a neonatal pediatrics 'fellow' at a major Los Angeles hospital